exit stage left
by windfalling
Summary: She returns to find closure. AU


**notes:** theatre!au, characterizations a strange mixture of the musical and the book and my own person canon. takes place after esmeralda goes hiding, one year later.

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><p><strong>exit stage left<strong>

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><p>She's standing at the back of the theatre with a hood over her head and a cup of coffee at her lips. He only catches a glimpse of her before the music crescendos and the room blacks out, but that face is unmistakable. When the lights come back on again a second later, she's weaving her way through the crowd, slipping out the back door.<p>

"Wait," he shouts.

She doesn't slow. If anything, she quickens her pace, reacting only by a slight turn of her head. He blows out a frustrated sigh and runs faster.

"What are you doing here?"

She ignores him. "High school Shakespeare productions now?" she says lightly, catching his wrist and slipping the program out of his fingers. She tips her head up and quotes, "'Lord, what fools these mortals be.'"

He bristles at the amused undertone in her voice. "Now, who was it that played Hermia only a year ago—?" _With Phoebus as her Lysander_, he thinks, and at her stricken expression, regrets saying anything at all.

"That doesn't matter," he says dismissively, "What are you doing here, Esmeralda?"

Her eyes flash. "It's _Agnes_," she snaps, "are you an idiot?"

"_I'm_ the idiot? They're still looking for you. What the hell do you think you're doing back?"

Her face changes. Esmeralda—no, Agnes—takes his hand and pulls him aside. "You know I'm innocent," she says, voice low, pleading. Her lower lip slides out into her familiar pout.

The past lies heavy between them. Gringoire turns her hand over and brushes the inside of her wrist, a quiet admission. He remembers them bloodied where the cuffs had been too tight and scraped her skin raw, where she'd tried to shove them off and run. He remembers her in the prison, utterly defeated, face ashen with her death sentence. He remembers her begging him to come along with her, and how he'd said no.

"Yes," he finally says, "I do."

Esmeralda-Agnes glances quickly down at their hands, where his isn't letting go. Her shoulders sag with the weight of all their unsaid parenthetical statements:_ I'm going to ask something from you again. _I know_. You could've walked away. _I know_. I missed you. _I missed you, too_. I know._

"I need a place to stay."

He's never been able to refuse her.

* * *

><p>"So, what are you really doing here?"<p>

"I'm looking for someone," she answers from the other side of the door. It opens, and she comes out in his shirt and pants. It takes an entire minute to take in the fact that _she is wearing his clothes,_ and another to find his voice again.

"Looking for someone," he echoes. "Who?"

Her fingers go to the pendant lying below her collarbone. The motion draws his eyes to it, and he turns red when he realises where he's looking. Her lips curve upwards into a coy expression and she laughs.

"Sorry, I—" he clears his throat, stands stiffly. "Sorry." His cheeks burn.

She moves past him, still smiling. "My mother," she continues. "I'm looking for her."

Surprise replaces his embarrassment. Esmeralda—because she will always be Esmeralda to him—gazes out the window, searching as if she would be able to find her simply by looking. "I've been looking for her for the past year, but I've traced her back. Right here. I could've walked right past her every single day of my life and I wouldn't have known it. I still don't know what she looks like," she adds.

"Is there anything I can do to help?"

"Paquette la Chantefleurie," she says, and at his blank expression clarifies, "my mother's name. Or at least what they call her. Interesting, isn't it? Oh, here's a picture."

She digs into her wallet and pulls out a small photograph. Gringoire is careful not to touch her hand when he takes it. She looks a lot like her mother.

He gestures with the photo in his hand. "I'll make sure to ask around."

"Great," she beams at him. "Oh. Pierre?"

"Yes?" he answers, too quickly.

Her face softens. "Thank you. Really."

Esmeralda leans up and kisses his cheek. He moves away the slightest bit, just enough to be noticeable, but he finds his fingers curling around the back of her neck, keeping her close.

They say that the smile is the first to go. The smile, then the sound of their voice, before you lose the image of their face completely. Looking at her now, it's difficult to believe that he'd ever forgotten her. (He hadn't, of course. But she'd gone blurry in his memory, partly because of time, the other part because he'd tried to forget her.) It's been a year and suddenly she's right in front of him and he can't pretend that he didn't miss her anymore. He remembers the world beside her, with her, and it eclipses the world without.

There are no stage directions for this, no script to follow.

She rests her hand on his chest, open-palmed. He pushes back her hair from her face, running his fingers down to the tips, where it hangs cropped short by her chin; it is another difference he doesn't entirely mind. For a second she leans in, but she ends up pushing herself away, shaking, looking close to panic.

"If you asked me to leave…" she trails off. Esmeralda stares at him and he comes to a terrible realisation, one that he refused to see long ago: _she knows._ Gringoire looks away first.

"No. Of course not."

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><p>He has run out of pretty words for her. <em>La Esmeralda<em>, he thinks, faintly, from a memory too distant to completely recall. Once he was able to write about her: little verses of poetry here and there, perhaps a letter or two written only in thought but never on paper.

Sometimes it frightens him. No, that is incorrect; it _always_ frightens him that when it comes to her, for all of his words, for the entire expanse of his vocabulary—the one constant thing in his life fails.

Fleur catches him staring at the photograph of Esmeralda's mother the next day. He is at the theatre, observing what he assumes is his set, currently a work in progress. She, of course, is there; it is assumed that she will be the lead in his play once again. Born into a powerful family of actors and actresses, Fleur-de-Lys is impossible to refuse. She has starred in three of his original plays and one of his Shakespeare adaptations, not including this one. Gringoire only accepts the best, after all.

But he has not forgotten the dispute between her, a certain recently-employed policeman, and Esmeralda.

Fleur plucks the picture out of his hands and raises an eyebrow, "Who's this?"

"Nobody," he says, smiling, though his voice is uneven, "shouldn't you be practising your lines?"

Her lips curl into a sneer. Gringoire smiles genuinely, this time. There is little else more amusing than irritating his star actress, though he knows she will never quit on him.

"Screw you," she replies, "I know them all by heart. We haven't enough men to play the parts yet anyway. If only I—"

"_Unsex me here_," Gringoire interjects, and her lips twitch with the beginnings of a grin.

"Yes," she says, "exactly."

He eyes her hand surreptitiously, where she still holds the picture. She catches his glance and one eyebrow arches. Leaning back on her heels, she examines the sepia-faded photograph with a critical gaze. "You know who she reminds me of?" Fleur muses suddenly, pursing her lips.

Gringoire holds his breath for three counts. Fleur does not wait for an answer. Instead, she delicately drops it into his hand—outstretched patiently to her—and curls her lip in thinly-veiled disgust.

"Fleur," he grabs the crook of her elbow just as she turns away, "wait. You cannot—please."

"Cannot what? Report to my dear husband, head of the police, that his _paramour_ has returned?" He tenses, and she laughs bitterly. "I have no interest in her affairs as long as she stays out of my sight. As far as I'm concerned, your wife is dead."

He lets go. Fleur begins to walk away almost immediately, but at a slower pace. She has always been one for theatrics, and just as she reaches the threshold of the door, she turns halfway to look at him. "You can thank me with a lead role," she says, and waves goodbye.

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><p>When he returns to his apartment, she's curled up on the couch with <em>The Complete Works of Shakespeare<em> open on her lap. He catches a quick glimpse of which one she's reading as he walks by: A Midsummer Night's Dream. A heavy sigh escapes him and he sits down on the chair next to her, gently closing the book and pulling the blanket over her shoulders.

Esmeralda stirs. She slowly stretches out, bringing a hand up to her mouth as she yawns. She doesn't look surprised to see him there.

"Sorry. Didn't mean to wake you," he murmurs.

"No, no. It's fine, I would've had a terrible backache if I stayed here anyway." She sits upright and looks extremely confused for a moment, glancing around her, before she notices that the book is lying on the table. "Hope you don't mind, I—"

"Not at all."

"And dinner's in the kitchen. I—thought you might be hungry. Coming home at this hour. I mean, last year…" she trails off, surely remembering the nights when he came home late without dinner, only to fall asleep purely out of fatigue as soon as he lies on the bed.

He doesn't tell her that he'd already gone out for dinner; he only nods and promises to eat later. Hesitating, he reaches for the thick book and places it on his lap, patting it once with his hand. Esmeralda's face crumples for the fleetest of moments before she gathers herself together.

"I was just reminiscing."

Gringoire is not one for playing therapist. He is not a person who coaxes tearful confessions out of people, and at the most he will provide a shoulder. But he finds himself flipping to the play she was reading: the play that led her to Phoebus, the play that showcased her talent and promised her a future, the play that held the last role she would ever perform in.

"_How now, my love! Why is your cheek so pale?_" he begins, and she squeezes her eyes shut. "_How chance the roses there do fade so fast?_"

"_Belike for want of rain, which I could well between them from the tempest of my eyes,_" she whispers faintly, blinking rapidly before casting her eyes upwards.

"I'm sorry," he says. It's the third time he's apologised to her. Then, because he can't stop voicing his careless thoughts, "Do you miss it?"

She reaches over to close the book. "Every day."

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><p>Fleur drops a slip of paper on his desk a couple days later. His head jerks up, first to her solemn face, then back to the paper, where there is an address written in her handwriting. Her expression should have been the first clue.<p>

"What's this?"

"It's who you're looking for." She sits on the edge of his desk and shifts uncomfortably. "I took the liberty of looking her up. I saw her name on the back of the photograph."

A grin breaks out on his face. He looks up at her. "I cannot express how thankful I am. I could kiss you right now."

She rolls her eyes, "Please, spare me." Fleur averts her eyes, and in an action very unlike her, she touches his shoulder in an almost comforting manner. "Don't thank me yet."

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><p>The address is a cemetery. With her directions, it doesn't take long to find the gravestone with the name carved upon it. He checks it ten times before he calls his apartment.<p>

Esmeralda picks up hesitantly.

"I think you should come meet me," he says, and she arrives without argument.

"She could be wrong. I mean, it's _Fleur-de-Lys_."

"No, it's—it's probably her."

"I—"

"This was always a possibility. It's not like this wasn't expected."

"Esmeralda."

"Thank you for helping me. And, tell her that too. Or don't, actually."

"…I'm sorry."

"It's okay. I'm okay, really. I always am."

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><p>They enter the safety of his apartment and she still doesn't cry. She doesn't cry when he gives back the picture, doesn't cry as she fingers her pendant. It is only after he goes to his room that he finally hears her, and he understands that she cannot cry in front of an audience. There is only so much she can give away freely. There are some things she must keep to herself.<p>

* * *

><p>She leaves, much too soon. Her bag is packed and she's standing by the front door of his apartment when he finds her. For a moment, they both don't speak. She's leaving him in the middle of the night <em>again<em>, and he can't do this anymore.

"Don't I get a goodbye, at least?" It comes out far too bitter for his liking.

"Pierre," she says, her voice catching oddly in the middle of his name. She drops her bag and goes to him; slowly, at first, before she throws her arms around his neck. He understands: this is the only way she can say goodbye.

"Stay." The selfish plea escapes before he can shove it down.

Her arms loosen enough for her to pull back and look at him. "You know I can't. Don't do that to me," she says, smiling half-heartedly, and he says it again. This time she has to blink back tears; her hand comes up to her eyes and she turns her head away.

"Esmeralda," his throat closes up, "shit. You know what—forget I ever said anything. I'll be okay. I always am."

"It's not like this is the last time I'll see you."

"You broke off contact for a year."

"I'm wanted for_ murder_, Pierre." He relents. Esmeralda sighs. "I'll write you," she promises. She cups his cheeks with both hands, goes on her toes and presses her lips to his.

"That isn't helping," he says quietly.

She mumbles an apology but she doesn't move away. Confusion slows her movements, and she's looking at him oddly—almost, he dares to think, in the same way he looks at her. Gringoire hesitates, leaning forward, and when she doesn't move away, he laces his fingers with hers and kisses her. The shape of her hand is as familiar to him as his own, and with his other hand he traces the curve of her ear, her cheeks, her neck. And he misses her already.

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><p>She stays for one more night.<p>

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><p>When she leaves—finally, this time—he gives her his best smile. It's one that he's practised for years, and it better damn well be convincing. His number is written on a piece of paper hidden in her pocket. She'd promised to call. She smiles back at him and waves before tugging her hood back up. They do not break.<p>

They are talented actors, after all.


End file.
